Monday - June 22, 2009

Drive to promote ‘Britishness’ another Labour Party failure .

I like this fellow and read him often.  I don’t know if he’s always right, but I haven’t caught him being wrong on anything so far.

What’s the Polish for ‘Tarmac your drive, sir?’


By Richard Littlejohn

The Daily Mail

As part of its drive to promote ‘Britishness’, the Government announced a couple
of years ago that all immigrants would be required to speak English.

That message clearly hasn’t got through to Town Halls, hospitals and police headquarters, which are still spending more than £50million a year on translating official documents into dozens of different languages.

These include a guide for gipsies, written in Polish, and a women’s directory published in Albanian, Bengali, Kurdish, Somali and Urdu, among others.

Both of these were the work of our old friends at Haringey Council. How many people have read them? Precisely none.

I can’t say I’m surprised. There may be 193 languages allegedly spoken in the north
London borough, but I’ve yet to come across any Polish gipsies offering to Tarmac my drive.

Haringey admitted that of 77 different documents posted online in several languages,
26 of them went unread, including a lesbian, gay and transgender guide published in French.

This has been going on for years. Some councils even print election material in foreign languages, though why anyone should be allowed to vote if they can’t read the candidate’s name is beyond me.

On my way in to town, there’s a prominent notice next to a park, featuring a drawing of a crow with a cross through it and an exhortation in several languages, many of them scribble, not to feed the birds.

Why waste money on this nonsense, simply on the off-chance that an Albanian transsexual might one day wander into the Town Hall?

Some councils are even putting out leaflets in obscure languages such as Karen, which is apparently spoken in eastern Burma, and Ga, a dialect you only find in parts of Ghana.

Nope, I’ve never heard of them, either. And though parts of Britain resemble the Tower
of Babel, I’m prepared to bet you’d have to wait a long time for someone to ask you
directions in Sierra Leonean Creole (another one on the list).

The madness of multiculturalism is that while immigrants are encouraged to stick to
their own language, they can never integrate and become full citizens.

I’ve no problem with foreign language newspapers or people speaking their mother
tongue in their own homes and clubs. But we should ban the publication of official
documents in any other language.

If foreigners want to settle here and take full advantage of the benefits which go with that privilege, they should learn to speak the Queen’s English.

Posted by peiper     on 06/22/2009 at 09:46 AM   
Filed Under: • Daily Life • UK •  
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